SAN FRANCISCO / Woman-on-woman harasser to pay fines

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, October 23, 2003

A state appeals court has upheld $75,000 in damages to a former Housing Authority clerk who said her female supervisor subjected her to unwanted touching, sexual innuendos and pornographic videos on an office computer.

Deborah Drummer, who worked at the Alice Griffith Development in Bayview- Hunters Point, said she endured the treatment by property manager Karen Huggins for several months, then reported it to the Housing Authority in January 1999. The authority transferred Huggins to another project, gave her anti-harassment training and promoted her, Drummer said.

Huggins denied sexual harassment, saying she was just being friendly, and called Drummer a "gold-digger" after Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith awarded damages in January 2001.

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The state Court of Appeal, in a ruling made public Wednesday, said the evidence supported damages against both Huggins and the Housing Authority, which the court said had done little to investigate two male employees' past harassment complaints against Huggins.

Defense lawyers argued that Goldsmith should not have considered the two men's cases and should have made findings about Huggins' sexual orientation before deciding whether she sexually harassed Drummer.

But the court said sexual harassment is not necessarily motivated by sexual desire, and the assumption that each person has a single sexual orientation is "demonstrably not true ... in a cosmopolitan city such as San Francisco that embraces sexuality in its many and varied forms."

Housing Authority spokesman Michael Roetzer said the agency had not seen the ruling and had no comment.